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Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)

Hi,

John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.

I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.

With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.

I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.

If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.

I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.

I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.

Thank you
Darragh Sherwin

Too many sections

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28 Dec 2007 16:21 - 28 Dec 2007 16:21 #1 by Dave (Dave Fallon)
Just a general observation.

Is there a real point in having so many different forums?

For example the equipment section should have two sub sections, equipment(not heaters, filters, other equipment) etc and DIY(surely tank construction can fit under this also)

Also, Is there a need for 4 seperate cichlid sections? why not combine the lot or at least south american and african? Members get the idea from the title of thread anyway.

As with marines, A simple tropcial marines and a reef beginners/emergencies forum would suffice.

This is merely an observation, I'm a member of a UK forum with 14 sections and 14000 members and it works really well, always active and not tedious to look through, we have 40+ sections excluding sponsors for for about 150 regular users.

Anyone have a thought on this?

Qui Vivra Verra.
Last edit: 28 Dec 2007 16:21 by Dave (Dave Fallon).

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28 Dec 2007 16:32 #2 by steven (steven)
Excellent idea Dave and one i'm sure would work as you said it can be a little bit of a pain searching for everything, the only thing is i'm not sure about mixing the Cichlid area my main concern would be newcomers that maybe might not understand the difference and different conditions required.
Darragh the site owner has posted an excellent post in the sponsors and standards thread, and maybe Dave with your expertise you could give a dig out there, you get to see some speices that the rest of use might never see. And any advise on Tankbusters is always welcome as i'm sure some of us at some stage has introduced havoc to the Aquarium at some stage....

Treat every day like your last, some day it will be??

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28 Dec 2007 17:06 #3 by Daragh_Owens (Daragh Owens)
I agree that there are too many sections, I think based on the volume of posts in several sections they could be culled a bit. We'll see what Darragh thinks. Anyone else any comment of that proposal?

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  • Anthony (Anthony)
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28 Dec 2007 20:38 #4 by Anthony (Anthony)
Replied by Anthony (Anthony) on topic Re:Too many sections
Certain sections could be joined but leavng the cichlids and Marine sections alone is a must.
It is so much easier to find and to post things.
They were split for a reason and they are working well IMO.

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29 Dec 2007 00:50 - 29 Dec 2007 01:17 #5 by darragh (Darragh Sherwin)
Some sections have gone missing and I didn't change anything, I'll look into it.
Darragh
Last edit: 29 Dec 2007 01:17 by darragh (Darragh Sherwin).

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29 Dec 2007 01:39 #6 by zebadee (zebadee)
IMO the seperate sections should be left the way they are or we run the risk of looking like many other general tropical fish forums who lack the specialist knowledge to offer specialist advice. Even as a new comer to aquatics I knew that my fish were cichlids and threfore the best area to get advice on them was a cichlid specific area. That said there are specific cichlid requirements and geographic diversities which I believe should be represented individually.

My two cents and nothing to do with the fact that I was one of the Tang/Malawi mods before the threads vanished?

John.

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29 Dec 2007 01:44 #7 by Daragh_Owens (Daragh Owens)
John, 4 posts in four months, I would hardly think changing the layout of sections would have made much difference :-)

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29 Dec 2007 02:08 - 29 Dec 2007 02:10 #8 by mickeywallace (Michael Wallace Cath Woods)
I have to say that while i agree some changes are needed, this needs to be considered in depth! first there are those that i would rarely post in and those i have no interest in but they do provide useful information and this should not be buried. We need easier access to articles, there is a lot of useful info there that goes unnoticed eg a link to Starting up & maintaining a stress free aquarium should be in \"Beginners Haven\".

Also a course in how to use the article writer would be a help, I had started to write stuff but got p**** off and never bothered since.



Moderators need to make more posts, there are moderators appearing from time to time and i am at a loss as to who they are.

Thus i suggest a monthly quota eg four post per calender month (sponsors not included of course) and i would exclude posts in \"general section\" in this.

We really need to think about what new type of species are becoming available and cater for those eg i am considering mudskippers but i go to other sites to research this as there unfortunately is no information here yet i seem to remember seeing them on one of the sponsors list, we need to move with the times not stagnate

sorry i type very slow

Mickey Wallace & Cath Woods
Last edit: 29 Dec 2007 02:10 by mickeywallace (Michael Wallace Cath Woods). Reason: sorry i type very slow

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  • Lindy (Lindy)
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29 Dec 2007 02:45 #9 by Lindy (Lindy)
Replied by Lindy (Lindy) on topic Re:Too many sections
I think the forum could do with a few more sections. Most other forums have different catorgories.

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29 Dec 2007 02:59 #10 by Daragh_Owens (Daragh Owens)
Hi Lindy

Welcome to the forum. What other forums are you a member of that have so many sections, I would like to have a look so we can see what needs to be done here.

Great photo of the knife fish, is that yours? Is it for sale, or would your husband let you part with it?


Daragh

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